Some early Islamic planned towns had very large axial streets, such as Anjar in the Lebanon (Kennedy 1985, 16), or at the 9th-century 'Abbasid capital at Samarra in Iraq (Northedge 2005, 100-4). But 'the disappearance of wheeled traffic in late antiquity and the early Islamic period must have had a profound effect on urban planning' (Kennedy 1985, 26) and early Islamic legal discussions suggested that public streets should be 7 cubits (just over 3m) wide (Kennedy 1985, 13), just wide enough to allow laden animals to pass freely. The majority of streets, in practice, were probably fairly narrow (less than 3m), and there were certainly numerous alleyways providing local access.
Many streets and alleys are not difficult to recognise on aerial images, as they are demarcated between building ranges: roughly parallel linear divisions, over some distance, would strongly suggest the presence of a street or alley. However, smaller alleyways, for example into the interior of larger city blocks, may well be harder to recognise on the images, and we should certainly not assume that all of these can be identified.
© Internet Archaeology/Author(s) URL: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue25/1/4_4_12.html
Last updated: Mon Sept 29 2008